by Lara Archer
She hurried to the foyer, lit the small lantern they kept there for such occasions, and opened the door.
Out in the gloom stood Viscount Parkhurst.
A slew of emotions swept over her—half cold, half hot. Embarrassment, thrill, fear.
There was no helping it: his nearness sent a hot spark of energy rippling over the whole surface of her skin, and set off a throbbing pulse low in her belly. For a moment, she could scarcely resist pulling him into an embrace, kissing him hard, and trying to draw him down on the foyer floor with her so they could repeat what they’d done that morning, and more.
But the collar of his black wool greatcoat was turned up, a barrier to his face, and his tall beaver hat loomed darkly. He looked quite literally like a shadow of himself.
The little she could make out of his expression was grim.
Was he angry with her, or….
Did this have nothing to do with what had passed between them earlier? People who knocked at night often wore that look, and it usually meant a clergyman was needed in a hurry.
Oh, dear.
A quick mental reshuffling was in order—a switch from lovelorn maiden to efficient vicar’s sister. She pushed her personal desires aside as though shoving them into a sack. “What’s the matter, Lord Parkhurst? Is someone ill?”
“What?” He blinked in apparent confusion, as though she were the one who’d surprised him at the door. Oh, his eyes were so startlingly blue, even in this half-light. It made her breath catch.
“Is someone ill?” she repeated. “At Parkhurst Hall? Your mother? Your brothers?”
“No,” he said, but his brow creased as if with worry. “They’re well. They’re all well. Is—is your brother at home?”
So he had come for the vicar. Something was certainly wrong, even if he wasn’t being quick to say so.
She schooled her voice to its usual rational self-control. “I’m afraid my brother was called out already. Donald Evans’s got drunk again, and fought with his wife, and Thomas has gone to get him into the care of one of his cousins before he does any harm.”
“Ah,” John said distractedly. “I hope someone found where Donald hid his musket and got it away before real trouble starts.”
Her heart flipped at the thought. “Thomas will calm him before it comes to that. I’m sure of it.”
“Yes, yes of course.” John seemed to realize he’d spoken rather alarmingly. “I’m sorry, Mary. Miss Wilkins. Your brother will know just what to do.”
“Donald will need watching till the drink wears off, and he minds Thomas better than anyone else, so Thomas may stay some hours. But if your need is urgent, I can go for him myself.”
“Oh. No. I—no, I wouldn’t trouble you like that.” Just then, he seemed to remember he was still wearing his hat. He snatched it off his head, but proceeded to spin it about by the brim, round and round in agitation.
She tried not to notice how the edges of his hair shone golden in the light of her lantern, how the shadows heightened the sculpted plains of his cheekbones. Lord, she wanted to touch him. Wanted to stroke her fingers through his curls once more.
Could he not say a single word, make a single gesture, to let her know he was aware as she was of what had happened between them that morning? Why must he be so stiff and uncomfortable with her?
Standing face to face with him in this formal mode was nearly unbearable. But sending him away seemed cruel, if he was half as troubled as he looked. “Would you like to come in and wait a bit? Thomas may be back sooner than I think. I could at least give you tea before you go home again.”
His eyes widened at the offer, as if shocked.
Why on earth? Granted, it wasn’t entirely proper to invite him into the house when her brother was away, but a vicar’s sister could bend the rules when a parishioner was in need. And considering what had already happened between them already that day, taking a cup of tea together could hardly be considered shocking.
He shifted foot to foot. “Well, I suppose I should talk to you anyway—first, I mean.”
“First?” That word turned her stomach instantly to water. What awful news did he bear that would concern her directly? “Is it one of the children from the school?” A panicked inventory flashed through her thoughts: little Jack Kelsey’s lungs were never strong. Billy Harrow was forever jumping out of trees. Annie and Lucy Turner’s father had been to market in Leeds just last week, where they’d had reports of scarlet fever.
But John only looked confused. “Children? No. Please, Mary, may I just come in?”
Apparently he wasn’t going to tell her anything until they were indoors. Her heart fluttering, she led the way into the kitchens, which seemed a more appropriate place to be alone with him than the sitting room, with its perilously soft and inviting divan and armchairs.
Once she had another lamp lit on the table, she got a good look at the man. He was rather green around the gills.
A new panic swamped her. “Oh, Lord, it’s you who’s ill! Why didn’t you tell me?” She couldn’t stop herself from laying a palm to his forehead. He didn’t feel warm, though his skin was a trifle clammy.
He sucked in a breath at her touch. “Mary. Miss Wilkins. Don’t.”
He jerked two chairs from under the table and pushed one towards her unceremoniously.
They both sat, and impulsively, she took hold of his hand. “Please, John. Just tell me what’s going on.”
His fingers gripped hers like a vise. He licked his lips. A muscle in his cheek jumped. He started to speak, stopped, started again, his usual easy eloquence apparently having abandoned him again.
She was beginning to be very worried, indeed.
And then he slumped forward off his chair.
“John!” She went to grab his arms to keep him from falling and hitting his head. But once his right knee touched the floor, his downward motion stopped and he was quite steady again.
He remained kneeling before her. This time it was John who took her hands, clasping them quite firmly in his own.
A new alarm rose in her chest.
This couldn’t be what it looked like.
It absolutely shouldn’t be.
But apparently it was.
“Mary,” John said, in a tight, choked voice. “You must do me the honor of becoming my wife.”
Someone might as well have dumped a bucket of icy water over her—chill mortification sank her every limb, threatening to pull her to the floor.
Dear Lord, he wasn’t deathly ill—he was proposing.
“John!” Her tongue tangled. “This—this…oh, gracious, Lord Parkhurst, this isn’t necessary.”
“Of course it’s necessary.” His face looked so distressed. His eyes despondent. “I…compromised your virtue.”
“You did no such thing.” She flung off his hands and jumped to her feet. “If anyone compromised anything, I compromised you. You climbed that hill to look for a site for a well, as a charitable act. I’m the one who begged and pleaded with you to….” Her cheeks flamed, and struggled for a decent way to put it. “To kiss me.”
He was still, stubbornly, kneeling. “It doesn’t matter. I’m enough of a man of the world to know how to resist temptation. It was my responsibility to stop things from going where they went. You were an innocent, you couldn’t know how—how things can become….so heated.”
Her cheeks flushed.
He broke off, his own cheeks going ruddy, and shifted his weight as though the very core of his body ached. “In any case, you only asked me for a kiss. I’m the one who…took it so much further. I did things with you only a husband should do.”
A ripple of heat went through her, despite her embarrassment. If that was his view of what husbands should do with their wives, marriage to him would be a living pleasure. She squelched that selfish thought. “Get up, John. Don’t be on the floor. I can’t bear it.”
Just at the moment, she needed to move away from him. If she didn’t, the impulses battling inside
her might split her straight down the middle.
She went to cupboard for saucers and cups, searching for the rare ones that had no cracks or chips. Tea might restore the man—might restore them both—to sanity. “Your offer is beyond decent, Lord Parkhurst,” she said, reminding him of who he was, and therefore how foolish he was being. “But you’re a peer of the realm! You need a wife appropriate to your station.”
“You’re a gentlewoman.”
“Impoverished gentlewoman. With a few minor lords in the family tree, mostly distant branches. London Society would not find my pedigree impressive.”
“Your mother had a baronet for an uncle.”
“Yes, on her father’s side. But on her mother’s, a bricklayer and a man with a Cheapside oyster shop.”
He shook his head impatiently. “You’re a virtuous woman. That’s all that matters.”
“But this is unnecessary. There will be no consequences to what we did. No one saw us. And it’s not like you could have gotten me with child.”
He gave a choked little laugh. “Always so practical, Mary.”
“Yes, practical.” Though her hands felt unsteady, they held the kettle firm as she lifted it from the hob and took it to the sink to pour hot water into her coarse earthenware teapot.
Tempting as his offer might be, he was speaking nonsense. Great heavens—what would all her neighbors think if Viscount Parkhurst suddenly married the vicar’s spinster sister? Everyone was expecting him to marry a Lawton girl. Any man in his right mind would prefer a Lawton girl. He could only end up with plain little Mary Wilkins if—if something untoward happened when they were alone together, something that forced his hand as a gentleman. Something quite outrageous.
Which is essentially what happened, of course, but in not quite as lurid a way as the townspeople would assume.
Or maybe what happened was more lurid than what the townspeople would think. It was certainly more lurid than what anyone thought prim and proper Mary Wilkins capable of. Herself included, at least up until this morning. Oh, she remembered the feel of his hands on her inner thighs, of his lips against her cleft, and his tongue pushing inside her. So much more sensual than anything she could have imagined beforehand.
She fumbled with the lock to her battered old tea-chest, and her fingers shook so much, half the precious leaves she spooned out scattered over the sink. “Can you imagine the scandal of what you’re suggesting?” she said, keeping her eyes averted from him. “It would be an outrage for you to spurn the Lawton girls. They’ve put off their Seasons waiting for you—Miss Lawton for three whole years! I know for a fact she’s turned down at least two very eligible suitors, both of whom have now married other girls. How many other chances has she wasted on your account? If you don’t marry her, people may think she’s on the shelf!”
John heaved a deep breath behind her. Clearly, he knew she was right to chide him.
“And then for you to go and marry the vicar’s sister?” she said. “A girl with no charms at all, when you had such pretty brides available to you? You know what everyone will assume.”
“I don’t care what anyone assumes.”
She turned to face him, and was instantly startled. John, who had been kneeling on the floor last she looked at him, now stood just inches away, towering over her. He must have got up without a sound, and now loomed so close, she could smell the wool of his coat. The spoon dropped from her fingers and clattered to the slate floor.
His eyes locked on hers, but with determination, not with passion. He was being very stiff-spined now. Dutiful. A soldier. “I only care about doing what’s right.”
“Well, I care what people assume! They’ll assume I seduced you, for why would a man like you seduce a girl like me? They’ll assume I used some shameless trickery. And they’ll assume we did….far worse than what we did.”
“What we did was enough.” The memory did not seem to please him. No, he looked utterly miserable, like a trapped animal.
“Think, John!” she pleaded. “If people think me a hussy, Thomas won’t be able to hold his head up in the pulpit. He may be asked to leave his position as vicar. He could be ruined.”
That at least made him avert his eyes for a moment, his expression abashed. But he gathered himself deliberately. “We still must do what’s right. I compromised you, Mary…in—in the sight of God.”
“God has seen far worse, believe me.”
“Not from me. Not from you.” He blinked suddenly. “Unless you’ve ever….”
“No! Certainly not! I’ve never done anything like that before!”
“Thank goodness.” The relief on his face was palpable.
Oh, dear. He was a good man. A very decent man. And he didn’t want to be in this position at all.
And why should he be? He hadn’t chosen it. A stand of vicious blackberry vines and an over-curious spinster had trapped him into it.
But he wasn’t backing down. His face looked dreadfully pale, but determined. “Your own brother is a man of God. If his household doesn’t do what’s right, whose will?”
“I’ll tell you what I know from being a clergyman’s daughter, and a clergyman’s sister. All my life, when people in this village have been in trouble, when they’ve transgressed, when they’ve done wrong by their marriage vows, they’ve come here. To this kitchen. Often in the middle of the night. You think I haven’t heard the confessions over the years? My bed chamber is just above this kitchen. What you and I have done is nothing compared to half of what I’ve heard. Nothing, John.”
He looked almost insulted. “That was nothing to you?”
A pang went through her heart. She didn’t want to think about what it had meant to her. She couldn’t think of that. All that mattered now was setting him free from the trap she’d inadvertently sprung on him.
She moved out from between him and the sink and went to the cupboard for her tea-strainer, setting it over the best teacup just as if they had nothing more to discuss than which workmen to hire for the school roof repair.
“Do you know Lady Ellerby, who’s leased Rosemere Cottage?” she said. “Did you know she had to leave London because she’d been having simultaneous affairs with the Prince Regent and the Duke of York, and the brothers nearly fought a duel over her? I’m not violating the sanctity of the confessional, either. She told me so herself, over tea. She seemed rather proud of it.”
“Please, Mary, I don’t care what other people—”
“Lord Parkhurst,” she insisted. “This morning was an aberration, for both of us. But I don’t regret it any more than Lady Ellerby regretted her affairs, and I’m not ashamed. It was something I needed, just once in my life, and you were kind enough to give it to me. But now it’s done. I won’t have it lead to any suffering.”
“Suffering? Good Lord, is that how you see it? Being married to me?”
Before she could say another word, he’d advanced on her again, wrapping an arm around her waist, spinning her to face him, and pushing her back against the cupboard.
His hips pressed to hers.
“Is this suffering?” he asked, and slipped his other hand inside her bodice, fitting his fingers around her breast.
Bright arcs of sensation shot out from where he touched her, radiating throughout her body, sending little starbursts everywhere. Her eyes squeezed shut. She only realized she’d been holding a teacup when it fell from her grip and shattered on the slate.
He ignored the crash.
His hand lifted her breast so the nipple peeked above the cloth, and he fitted his mouth where his palm had been. He suckled her as he’d done that morning, and the sensation sent a throb between her legs.
And he wasn’t stopping. His hands both went behind her and began tugging at the laces of her dress, even as his mouth continued drawing at her breast. Soon he had the top of her dress loosened enough to draw it down from her shoulders, baring her halfway down her rib cage. With hands and lips and tongue he pleasured her, moving from one nipple
to the other, hungrily.
She leaned back against the cupboard, boneless, molten. She wanted to sink to the floor with him, broken china or no. The only good she could imagine in this world would be for him to lift her skirts and touch her down there as well, and undo his trousers and sink himself inside of her.
He was groaning now, his breathing grown frantic, and his hands reached down to grasp the fabric of her skirt. It would be so easy, so easy to surrender everything to him. To let him give himself to her, right here, right now, forever.
But it wasn’t what he wanted—not really. He was a man. He could take his pleasure with any woman, her as well as another, once he put his hands on her. But so much more was at stake here.
He thought he had to marry her. And he was a viscount, for pity’s sake. He needed a fashionable wife, a lovely creature who could run an aristocratic house and charm earls and waltz with dukes and host dinners for the Prince Regent himself. Not a little country mouse with a pale mouth and flat chest and no city manners.
She couldn’t let him ruin his whole life over a few minutes’ animal indiscretion.
Gathering all her strength, she pushed him away, hard.
He looked startled, half in his trance again, confusion on his face.
When he tried to move toward her again, she held out one hand to block him. She yanked her bodice back to a reasonable degree of modesty and drew herself up straight. The next question would be painful, for both of them, but he had to understand the point she was trying to make. “Do you love me?”
Now he was flustered. “Mary….”
She thought about the Miss Lawtons, with all their graces and physical charms. They were women designed to attract men’s love. She herself most certainly was not. “Listen to me,” she said. “There’s only one thing that matters here. Before this morning, before we went up on that hill, did you have the slightest thought in your head about asking me to marry you?”
Every muscle in his face seemed to tighten. He nearly spoke, then stopped himself. The only possible answer was no, and they both knew it. “But we did go up on that hill!” he insisted.
